Head of IT

Head of IT (Onsite, London) — £100,000–£115,000

Company: Leading UK women’s fashion retailer (high-growth)
Location: London, W12 (White City) — Onsite
Type: Permanent
Salary: £100k–£115k base (DOE)

The Role

We’re looking for a Head of IT who can combine strategic leadership with hands‑on technical authority . You’ll shape and modernise the IT function while maintaining excellent service delivery for a fast‑paced, multi‑site retail environment. This role suits someone who has progressed from an engineering background and is still comfortable getting into the detail when needed.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Team

• Lead, mentor and develop the IT team; build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement
• Implement structured performance reviews, development plans and certification roadmaps
• Recruit and retain high‑performing technical talent; strengthen succession planning and resilience

Technical & Architecture (Hands‑on)

• Own and evolve a hybrid estate (legacy on‑prem + cloud) ensuring reliable integration
• Manage a mixed Mac + Windows endpoint environment (e.g., JAMF and Intune )
• Act as technical authority for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 , identity/SSO (incl. Entra ID )
• Be the escalation point for complex incidents (network, servers, performance, security)
• Oversee patching, firewalling, DR replication and broader security/compliance controls

Business Delivery & Governance

• Scale the IT operating model to support a £250m+ retail business
• Move performance measurement beyond SLAs to business‑impact KPIs/OKRs
• Set and enforce documentation/architecture standards; QA internal and vendor delivery
• Manage suppliers/SaaS partners and hardware vendors with strong operational governance

Service Delivery & Adoption

• Drive a customer‑first IT service culture across HQ and stores
• Mature service desk from reactive to proactive; reduce downtime and improve user experience
• Lead rollouts/migrations via robust change management to avoid peak‑trading disruption

Required Experience

• Senior IT leadership experience in a fast‑paced, complex environment (ideally £250m+ turnover and/or multi‑site)
• Clear engineering roots (Systems Admin / Network Engineer / Cloud Engineer / Infrastructure Architect)
• Retail/e‑commerce and international operations exposure strongly preferred

Technical Skills (Hands‑on expected)

• Hybrid cloud + virtualization
• Identity & access: AD / Entra ID / Okta / Google Cloud Identity
• Endpoint management: Apple Business Manager, JAMF, Intune, GPOs
• Networking/security: routing/switching, firewalls, VPN, SD‑WAN, Wi‑Fi (retail footprint)
• Scripting/automation (PowerShell/Bash/Python) desirable

Key Competencies

• High technical credibility; strong vendor management/challenge
• Pragmatic problem‑solving with commercial awarenessComfortable in ambiguity and competing priorities
• Able to translate technical detail into clear business outcomes